Baylor Female College Historic District

The Baylor Female College District is a good example of the architecture and campus design of a small college from the first half of the 20th century. The nomination relates to the statewide context of Education, particularly in the development of university-level education for women. It is being submitted in conjunction with the Historic Context "Community Development in Belton, Texas, 1850-1945." The district is eligible for listing in the National Register under Criterion A, for its historical association with the development of women's colleges in Texas and for its cultural and educational significance within the history of Belton. It is also significant in the area of Architecture as an example of the Georgian Revival style in early 20th-century educational buildings, and in landscape architecture as an example of the Beaux-Arts-influenced college plan.

Baylor Female College (coeducational since 1968 and renamed the University of Mary Hardin- Baylor in 1978) was the earliest women's college west of the Mississippi. The college was originally chartered in 1845 as the Female Department of Baylor College
in Independence, Texas, the same year. Baylor College remained coeducational until 1851 when a separate women's college was created. In 1866, the women's college was chartered as a separate school and given the name Baylor Female College. The two Baylor
appeared until the early 1880s when the railroads bypassed Independence and the town began to decline. The college's Board of Directors decided to permanently split the men's and women's branches and move them to locations nearer to rapidly growing urban areas in central Texas. The men's college (now Baylor University) was relocated to Waco. officials of the women's college considered various locations but finally settled on Belton after local citizens offered an incentive package consisting of $31,000 and a large parcel of land for the campus.

In 1886 the college was established at a wooded site roughly a mile northwest of the courthouse square in what was a rapidly developing area at the edge of the city. In the early 1880s, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway built its depot just to the north of the campus. The construction of the new college and the railroad depot prompted a flurry of new residential construction in the area and by the 1890s the neighborhood around the campus had become the city's most fashionable neighborhood. Many of the finest Belton homes built between 1885 and 1920 are in the area.

The first building of Baylor Female College was Luther Hall. Completed in 1886, the large Renaissance Revival structure was designed by Matthew Dow and housed all of the school's administrative offices and classrooms. The campus grew rapidly, and before the turn of the century, a number of additional buildings were constructed including an electric powerhouse, a steam laundry, a business manager's cottage, a dining hall, and a number of small houses for boarders.

In 1912, with the appointment of John Crumpton Hardy as President, the college entered the second period of expansion which lasted until the mid-1920s. In the early teens, Hardy launched a campaign to increase both the size of the college and its physical plant. Under Hardy's leadership, the enrollment at the college increased from 411 in 1912 to more than 1,000 by 1918. Hardy was able to raise a large sum of money to finance a new building campaign.

Up to this time, the arrangement of the campus buildings had remained largely haphazard. However, in the late teens' college administrators hired Chattanooga architect Rubin M. Hunt to prepare a master plan for the campus. Hunt's design called for a large rectangular green surrounded by 2- and 3-story Georgian Revival buildings. The plan was similar to that adopted by many other colleges in Texas and throughout the nation at the time, most notably Southern Methodist University in Dallas which also built its structures in the Georgian Revival style. The buildings at Baylor Female College were to be connected by a series of straight walkways which crisscrossed to create star patterns on the main green. Hunt's plan also called for a series of symmetrical plantings around the buildings and in the common areas.

School officials adopted the plan the same year and immediately embarked on an ambitious building program. Over the course of the next decade and a half, most of the earlier turn of the century structures were razed and replaced by symmetrical Georgian Revival buildings. The first three buildings, Wells Science Hall, Burt Dormitory, and Ruth Stribling Dormitory were constructed in 1920. They were followed by Hardy Hall built in 1929, Pressler Hall completed in 1930, and Hughes Recital Hall constructed in the 1930s.

Luther Hall, which occupied a prominent position at the center of the campus, was destroyed by fire in 1929. Rather than rebuild it, administrators decided to preserve a section of the structure's stone arches as a memorial. The stabilized ruins now form a focal point of the campus near the eastern entrance and are all that remains of the campus' earliest architecture.

In 1923 the name of the school was changed to Baylor College for Women, and in 1934 to Mary Hardin-Baylor College. The growth of the college, which had been phenomenal during the first fifteen years of Hardy's administration, began to decline sharply during the late 1920s. In 1926 the combined enrollment of the college and the day school it operated reached 2,372. But over the course of the next 20 years, the enrollment dropped by an average of 150 students per year. Among the principal reasons for this decline were the economic hardships of the 1930s and the growing competition from the large state-supported institutions. The decline continued until the early 1950s when school administrators began efforts to put the college on a firmer financial basis and attract new students. The college applied for and received two Ford Foundation grants in 1955 and 1956. A new athletic gymnasium was built in 1957 and a new library was constructed in 1962. These gains, however, were partially offset by a fire in 1964 which destroyed the Wilson Administration Building and Alma Reeves Chapel.

In the late 60s, the enrollment began to grow more rapidly and the campus experienced a third building boom. A number of large classroom and dormitory buildings were constructed on sites adjacent to the main campus or interspersed with the older buildings. Although most of the new buildings are somewhat larger than those built in the 1920s and 30s, they were constructed in the same reddish-brown brick and in a modified Georgian Revival style in keeping with the older structures. In most cases, the later architects followed Hunt's original plan with the result that the symmetrical Beaux-Arts-inspired arrangement has largely been preserved.